Writing your own copy

wannabeavoiceactor

8 years ago

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I mentioned the other day that I talked my way into making my first commercial. Of course it is on the internet, and almost no one will ever hear it — but I think that is probably a plus given my level of expertise at the moment!

The other thing I mentioned though is that I am also creating the copy! Whee!

That is a lot of fun, and gives you a slightly better appreciation for the copywriters that hacked out that stuff you have been slaughtering in class!

It also gives you a chance to see what is good copy for voicing and what isn’t. Voice copy is quite a bit different from copy written for print. I think we have all probably had some experience with trying to get print material to sound like something a human might actually have come out of their mouth at any given time – and it ain’t easy! Sometimes it’s not even possible!

When you are writing your own stuff, you can get rid of the things that are hard for you to say (and we all have those things) and you can write it just like you would say it! You might be surprised how easily that will flow out of you, and how natural it sounds when you voice it.

I can see how frustrating it must be sometimes for experienced VO types to have to deal with crappy copy when they know exactly how to fix it, but just aren’t allowed to!

So writing your own copy is quite fun, and I think it is pretty informative too! You should try it!

Now I do have to admit, I know next to nothing about writing ad copy, so don’t ask me about that. The one thing that sticks with me from somewhere, is Interrupt, Engage, Inform, Sell. Or something like that.

You want to break the listener’s attention away from what they are doing, engage them in your ad, tell them what it is you are selling (and everything is a sales job! even if you aren’t selling anything! Capiche?) and then engender in them the need to buy/steal/get/whatever it is you are selling.